18. Change Measurement

‌What is it?

Change measurement allows organisations to view, understand and track progress towards the Future State Definition in order to realise the benefits described in the business case.

The purpose of this process is to document measures appropriate to your change initiative. Change measurement and Business Readiness (link) processes complement and interlink with one another. Business readiness tends to focus on a one-time event – cutover or transition – and therefore based more around checklists (for example, systems tested?, facilities in place?, training completed?). Change measurement similarly tracks progress towards the desired future state but tends to be more focused on whether the people and organisation have the resources and support required to ensure the benefits of the change are delivered over the longer term. Change Measurement can therefore be used as a mechanism to capture some of the data required for the business readiness assessment but should be carried on into the Sustain phase to track the progress of change towards realising the business benefits.

Why do it?

Complete this process in order to:

Create a change measurement approach which accounts for all the dynamics likely to affect the delivery of benefits
Prepare and administer a measurement tool that tracks progress of the change initiative against clear success criteria
Provide key management information about where things are or are not on track
Identify issues and take early action to minimise transition risks

When to do it?

Design, Develop and Deliver phases. Baselines need to be taken at the start of the initiative and then repeated at key milestones to track progress

Define objectives for the measurement, for example, to:

Build a background picture of progress from previous change initiatives and any legacy issues affecting stakeholders’ current capacity for change
Create a baseline measure for people and organisational readiness for change against which future measurements can be tracked
Identify stakeholders, factors and forces most likely to enable change / inhibit change

How do you want to collect information? Depending on size and scale of the change initiative and impacted staff and on whether you are focusing on quantitative or qualitative information - you could use:

Surveys
Interviews
Focus groups
Workshops
Third party tools

The most widely used approach is to run change measurement surveys. These can then be supplemented with interviews and workshops if needed.

Who do you want to survey? It is preferable to survey all people affected by the change to engage everyone in getting their views on the progress of change. However, this is not always possible so it is suggested that a minimum of 20% of the target population is covered in any change measurement cycle to obtain representative results.

When do you want to survey? You need to define the timing of change measurement activities against the lifecycle of the change program. Change measurement is usually conducted close to the start of the initiative to establish a baseline with measurements taken either at regularly spaced intervals or to coincide with key milestones.

18.2 Change measurement tool and plan

‌‌For surveys and interviews you will need to define the appropriate questions. The type of measurement questions selected is bound up with the choice of method as well as preferred mode of output, for example:

For a more quantitative result: use multiple choice questions, rating scales and other forms of pre-defined responses. This provides numerical data which can be more easily processed and analysed. Whilst it can sometimes lack the powerful insights brought with qualitative results it provides clear data on which is often preferred by management teams. This is most easily administered in a survey format but can also form part of interviews, workshops and focus groups.
For a more qualitative result: use open ended questions which allow you to capture individual comments, descriptions, perceptions and insights. Whilst this doesn’t readily lend itself to data analysis, it can provide more meaningful insight. Responses are best captured in an interview, workshop or focus group context but surveys can also be adapted to include open ended questions.

Next you need to define how the change measurement tool will be delivered, tracked and the results analysed. A common mistake is to underestimate the time, effort and resources required to administer the change measurement tool.

Build a substantial lead time for delivery, completion and return or collection of the survey (or set up and completion of interviews, workshops and focus groups)
Do not assume that stakeholder details (email addresses, job titles, business unit, locations and other necessary demographic information) are readily available.
Do not underestimate the time required for technical and physical logistics – e.g. server hosting for surveys, meeting venues for interviews etc.
Plan communications carefully: be clear about survey requirements and plan reminder communications to ensure a statistically significant response
If any part of the measurement population will be completing surveys by hand be clear about how the surveys will be physically collected and the results aggregated

Tool: Some example survey questions and interview / workshop prompts are given in the Change Measurement tool

Template: The details of how you intend to measure change progress is documented in the Change Measurement Approach

The timings of change measurement are incorporated into the Change Management Plancreated in the Shared change purpose theme)

18.3 Establish baseline and repeat measurement at key milestones

Once you have agreed the approach to change measurement and defined the questions you will ask you should conduct a baseline measurement and then review the baseline data for patterns and insights at different levels of the organisation.   

Example patterns and insights to look for at the organisational level include:
- What emerges as key organisation strengths? Key organisational weaknesses? Where are they standalone strengths and weaknesses and where are they interlinked?
- What risks and opportunities are being reflected comprehensively across different levels of the organisation?
- What key messages are and aren’t being heard and understood throughout the organisation
Example patterns and insights to look for at the department / college level include:
- Which departments show most change progress?
- Which departments show least change progress
- Are there any reported capability gaps?  
Example patterns and insights to look for at the team and individual level include:
- Which teams and individuals are most embodying the change?
- Which teams and individuals are least embodying the change?
- Are there any gaps in team and individual performance support?

At this point you can supplement and quantitative survey data by meeting with stakeholder representatives to discuss your initial analysis and gain direct feedback.

You should confirm that change measurement schedule going forward based on the key milestones of the initiative. Ensure that you use the same questions each time so that you can build your analysis of progress but select different groups of people each time to avoid in-build bias and stakeholder survey fatigue.

18.4 Identify action to support change effort

‌The final step is to prepare an action points in response to the data analysis providing support and adjustments to the change effort where appropriate.  This can be cascaded through feedback meetings in a workshop style format:

Involve the change network in a workshop to review the results report and collaboratively agree an action plan
Liaise with team managers in advance to provide them with an early briefing of survey team results and to agree the best way to communicate results and facilitate constructive action-planning
Facilitate a discussion with the team about what is working well, what isn’t working well and what additional support they need
Include actions that can be taken by change leaders, individuals and/or the University overall to support individuals in making more change progress

Prepare a summary of findings across different teams for the Change Governance and ensure any actions agreed with the change leadership are fed into the overall Change Management Plan

18. Change Measurement

‌What is it?

Why do it?

When to do it?

Inputs

Outputs

How to do it?